IT Chapter Two: Bill Hader Credits Finn Wolfhard For His Casting

"Finn must be the most powerful person in Hollywood."

It's a pretty impressive lineup of actors playing the adult Losers Club in IT Chapter Two, and Bill Hader gives all credit for his casting to his young Richie Tozier counterpart Finn Wolfhard.

Following the success of 2017's IT and before the adult Losers were cast, the kid Losers were frequently asked who they'd like to see play their older selves. Wolfhard repeatedly answered "Bill Hader," and apparently that was enough to get the attention of Hader's agent, director Andy Muschietti and Hader himself.

"Finn got me the job," Hader said during the press conference for IT Chapter Two. "He said, 'I want [Bill Hader] to play it,' and then my agent sent me a link saying, 'Hey, look at this.' I was like, 'Well that's nice,' and then months later my agent called me and said, 'Andy Muschietti wants to meet you for IT Two,' and I was like, 'Finn must be the most powerful person in Hollywood.'"

Hader's potential involvement was first reported in April 2018, six months after the first IT hit theaters. During a later press Q&A, when it was mentioned to Wolfhard that Hader credits him with landing the role, Wolfhard responded, "He does because I used to talk about him a lot. It was really cool that he ended up doing it."

To bond, the kid Losers wrote letters to their adult selves -- which were given to the actors playing their older versions -- and also gave them a photo of the younger cast members as children to help the pair connect. Both Hader and Wolfhard apparently took this experience with a grain of salt, to humorous results.

"They wrote these letters and gave us pictures of themselves as children in a frame, and they gave them to us and it was very sweet, but Finn came up to me and was like, 'Hey, you're not going to want this,'" Hader recalled. "He handed it to me and, yeah, it's like a picture of him as a little kid in a frame, and I'm on location staying in an apartment, and that would be the only picture in my apartment is a little boy. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm like, 'Dude, I'm not going to take that.'"

From Wolfhard's perspective, he said, "I just wrote a letter that said, 'I hope you're famous when you grow up,' basically. There was no advice or anything ... but yeah, it was great."